Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

Ars Technica has posted their impressions from a hands-on session with Valve's new Steam Controller. The controller notably departs from standard practice of relying on two thumbsticks for precise movement, instead replacing them with concave touchpads. From the article:
"When used as a kind of virtual trackball, as most games did with the right pad, it was a revelation. When used as a virtual d-pad, as it was on the left pad, it was an exercise in frustration. Let's focus on the right pad first. There's definitely a learning curve to using this side of the pad properly; years of muscle memory had me trying to use it like an analog stick (minus the stick) at first. It only really began to click when I started swiping my thumb over the pad, as I've seen in previous videos (there was no one on hand to really explain the controller to me, so I was left figuring it out on my own, just like a new Steam Machine owner). When I say it "started to click," I mean that literally. The subtle clicking in your hands as you swipe along the pad is an incredible tactile experience, as if there was an actual weighted ball inside the controller that's rolling in the direction you swipe. And like a trackball slowly losing its inertia, the clicking slows its pace after you lift your thumb off the pad, giving important contextual information for the momentum imparted by your swipe."
More write-ups are available about the controller from Gamespot, Gizmodo, and Joystiq.

A spatial controller could be cool, like the Gyration Air Mouse, but I [w]ould bet Gor[i]lla arm fat[i]gue would be a problem...

Consider how Nintendo solved the problem of arm fatigue. The Wii Remote can be used with one end balanced on your chair or in your lap. As long as the camera in the controller can see the IR emitters next to your TV, the Wii Remote can detect which way it is pointed.

Valve is a billion dollar company that specializes in DRM. Repeat: They specialize IN DRM.

So when you say "Sounds a damn sight more open than any other 'console' out there."

I say: I am glad you are optimistic and interpret it the way you want to hear it.

But when a company that specializes in DRM --- and Steam is great, by the way, and I enjoy playing No More Room In Hell as one example --- but they still specialize in DRM and the idea of optimistically assuming the ultimately awesome best out-of-this-world groovy scenario might work for you.

This extreme optimism doesn't work for me. Steam is a DRM-based platform, I cannot imagine any scenario where it resembles "open". Regardless of how it "sounds" (which is something called "marketing" in some corners of the world).

Steam is a DRM-based platform, I cannot imagine any scenario where it resembles "open".

For one thing, the Steam DRM platform is designed to coexist with DRM-free games on the same machine. I could take a DRM-free game for Linux and install it on an Ubuntu PC that also has the Steam client installed or on a SteamOS PC. Console DRM, on the other hand, is specifically designed to reject anything DRM-free. For another, it's reportedly easier to get an indie game greenlit on Steam than it was on the seventh-generation consoles. Remember the issues that Robert Pelloni had with his RPG Bob's Game?

To add to this, steam doesnt force its drm on any publisher/game creator that doesnt want it. There are plenty of games for purchase on steam that use absolutely no drm, once downloaded you can go to their install dir and run the game executable without steam running just fine. At that point its just another distribution service

Good point. I really hope that Valve/Steam puts more pressure on publishers to just ditch their DRM options. Steam certainly has the clout to do so.

However, I don't see this being possible w/o Steam being a monopoly. (not a good thing either) Publishers REALLY want a piece of steams action, and if Steam leans on them too hard, they will just take their ball and make their own distribution systems. Till now, the fact that they suck at distribution systems (as they focus on DRM first, and content deliver

I really hope that Valve/Steam puts more pressure on publishers to just ditch their DRM options.

PCs that ship with SteamOS are probably pressure enough, as a lot of these third-party digital restrictions management libraries aren't ported to the Debian GNU/Linux operating system that underlies SteamOS. As far as I can tell, the only StarForce I can get on Linux is an early NES shoot-em-up by Tecmo [wikipedia.org], dumped from the Game Pak with the INL Retro copier [infiniteneslives.com].

However, I don't see this being possible w/o Steam being a monopoly.

Once the iBuyPower Steam Machine comes out, SteamOS will have a (temporary?) monopoly on mass-produced set-top gaming PCs.

This is exactly the problem that PCs that ship with SteamOS are intended to fix, by providing a home theater PC in a box.

Lots of people actually like Apple's walled garden

Why? Is it a perception that restrictive developer qualifications are correlated with higher median quality of applications, or is it something else?

or accept that Windows (8) PC as that's the only thing the big name store carries.

That and their pragmatist friends and relatives have told them that Windows 8 can be tamed [classicshell.net]. Windows Vista too had become acceptable after Mojave (Windows Vista Service Pack 1) shipped.

and when they say "I want to play games in the living room, the LCD response is PS4/XBONE or even the Wii U

[Most gamers don't see lack of selection and lack of mods on Apple, Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony platforms as] a serious enough problem to be fixed by upgrading/switching

New games not coming out for PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 anymore is another problem. Should a gamer solve that by upgrading to PlayStation 4, by upgrading to Xbox One, or by upgrading to a Steam Machine? The Steam Machine would solve not only lack of new games for the old platform but also lack of selection and lack of mods.

And this is where "games and Office" tips in the favor of Windows.

LibreOffice is available for Windows and Linux. If you meant specifically Microsoft Office, that costs hundreds of USD extra anyway. And if you're going to be naming names, you could make

Well, in my definition of gamer, a gamer should upgrade to as many systems he can afford that has the games he wants to play. And keep his old ones around if they still work, removing them only after emulation/backwards compatibility is available

How many daisy-chained composite and HDMI switch boxes would it take to keep a PlayStation 2, GameCube, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and Wii U running, as well as an NES, Genesis, Super NES, and Nintendo 64 for games not on Virtual Console?

This means, a person sticking to a PS4/XBONE can get his Sony or MS exclusives, but not miss out on "SteamBox exclusives", as that's not a thing.

There are plenty of games that are exclusive to Steam, such as games from a developer that is not yet licensed for PlayStation 4 or Xbox One. Is it easier to get a game greenlit on Steam or on the consoles? (This ties into your comment about using Steam to gain experienc

You should be able to plug your Linux box into a TV using an HDMI port today.

Provided you already have a Linux box with a gaming GPU and a TV-friendly slim chassis, and you already have another computer to use at your desk. A lot of families currently own one PC, and it's in a separate room from the big TV in the living room. True, a SteamOS PC is just a mass-produced set-top gaming PC, but the fact that it's marketed as a set-top gaming PC means it's more likely to come with an appropriate GPU and chassis than your average Office Depot special.

Few people are going to want a SteamBox because it is Linux, they will want it for the "Steam DRM Service" otherwise they would just use Linux.

I don't see the big deal about running HDMI cables unless they are very long. I have no hassles with ten metres and really can't see any prospect of any unless there are a lot of machine tools or other sources of a lot of intense electromagnetic noise around. Washing machine motors etc shouldn't put out enough to be a hassle even if you loop the cable around it.

I don't see the big deal about running HDMI cables unless they are very long.

From one room to another, they would be very long, and not everybody has both permission and inclination to cut holes in the wall to run the cable. The advantage of a console or set-top PC is that you don't have to negotiate with your landlord for permission to break the walls, and you don't have to pay an electrician to pull the cable through the wall if local laws require it, and you don't have to also pull USB, which requires a repeater every 5 m, for the game controllers, and someone else can be using t

Fair enough in a lot of cases but I just don't buy the argument about electrical interference.I don't see anything wrong with ten metre or so HDMI cables so long as it is convenient to do so. You are correct that USB would be impractical beyond 10m since the cheap extenders don't chain and the expensive ones make you wonder why you aren't spending that money on the set top pc you are describing.

The main reason I don't have a PC near the TV is if it has to have the grunt to play new 3D games (or even h264

Fair enough in a lot of cases but I just don't buy the argument about electrical interference.

Laws that require hiring a bonded electrician to install HDMI, USB, or Ethernet likely exist as a safety (or safety theater) measure arising from the 115 or 220 volt (depending on region) AC lines in the walls.

The main reason I don't have a PC near the TV is if it has to have the grunt to play new 3D games (or even h264 when it came out) then it has to be relatively expensive and have plenty of cooling.

Cooling doesn't have to be noisy. To be fair, my dual-core 3.2GHz Phenom II, GTX460 isn't the latest and greatest, but the TDP is up there and requires a decent amount of cooling. According to the sound meter on my phone (which is probably inaccurate), the noise level is 2-3dBA above ambient noise, sitting at my desk right next to the PC. Hard drive search noise is subjectively the most apparent, and it's still very mild due to vibration-damped mounting and could be solved completely by either using quiet l

The people commenting on that article have got it mixed up with electrical cabling even though they pretend that they have not. My nephew has just started an apprenticeship as an electrician and he can run ethernet cable unsupervised. The voltage and current is far too low for the electrical safety standards to apply at all.There is of course a training course for cabling but it's not a requirement. It's just a convenience for employers that don't want a fully fledged electrician but want someone with a

But it's still a lot more convenient for anyone but a hardcore geek to buy a console than to pull HDMI and USB cable through the wall. The commercial success of consoles shows that the majority of people are willing to spend the money and accept the limited game selection as payment for the convenience. Steam Machines add a mass-produced set-top gaming PC as a third option.

True, but where convenient it works, say if the PC is just in the next room or in a house with very easy underfloor access. A dedicated PC or console may be overkill if you just want to watch movies in a format that the normal hardware associated with the TV can't handle.For games I'm getting the impression that a dedicated console is nearly always superior to a MS Windows PC at this point.

I already do that but MS Windows sucks dog balls with multi-monitor setups, especially if one is in another room and especially with full screen games or full screen movie playing software.For example it sucks to be watching a movie or playing a game when a reboot notification presumably pops up on another screen you can't see, waits for input that never happens, then the fucking thing decides to reboot without the input kicking you out of the game or movie.Another is when one of the many things in the MS Windows ecosystem that has it's own update program decided to pop something up in your face to tell you something you do not care about while you are watching a movie or playing a game - bonus points for the ones that minimise your game so you can't get it back without alt-tabbing to it more times than the interface intends (sometimes you get an empty frame but no game graphics).

Turning off updates, antivirus etc would make it less annoying but is utterly stupid with the current malware swamp infesting the platform - if it's on the net to authenticate the game it had better be patched up to avoid the latest exploits.

It's almost as if it's deliberately annoying to drive people towards the Xbox, but I'd say it's just poor planning and a diminished care factor. Either way a console or a linux distro (which never forces reboots - if the user doesn't answer the thing doesn't take that as a yes like MS Windows) is far less annoying. Multi screen X, or even how Matrox did multi-screens on MS Windows since at least 2000, is vastly superior to the adhoc dogs breakfast of MS Win7 doing multiple screens, especially with multiple video cards. If they can't learn from methods from more than a decade ago they are just not trying.

Another is when one of the many things in the MS Windows ecosystem that has it's own update program decided to pop something up in your face to tell you something you do not care about while you are watching a movie or playing a game

Then that program has a defect. Standard procedure is to download updates for a program only once the user has chosen to start the program, and then apply them once the user closes the program. For example, if you're watching a movie in VLC, it'd download updates in the background while the movie is playing, and it'd ask for elevation to apply them after you have closed VLC.

There seems to be a lot with that defect that have an application that checks for updates when the main application is not running. You can stop those updaters from starting with some registry hacks or utility that does the hacks for you but it's a treadmill, since the updaters get added to the startup again when you update the real application.It becomes a very annoying environment just at the point where MS were starting to get their shit together.

True DRM is actually a good thing. When DRM is done right, it's practically invisible, and the benefits and ease of use should make it seem like an enticing option over say, piracy.

So what does Steam do that benefits me, the consumer?- Auto updating games with patches/DLC. No more manually downloading patches, I can pause and resume as I please, I no longer have to start the game to figure out that it's out of date.- It's free - no subscription/signup fees. Some advertising, but the adverts are all for prod

Hardly. I tried several PC online merchants and Steam is the worst. The late Direct2Drive, GamersGate and Amazon are all superior to Steam. I avoided Steam for a long time but tried it after picking up a few Humble Bundles. I am not happy at all with the service.

I want my relation to the merchant to end after I made the purchase... or at least, after I install it. Steam is the only one that requires me to run a client to launch the game.

Maybe you should branch out a bit before you use the word "only" so often.

It's actually quite common for games to log play time. Heck this extends back to the Quake / Starcraft days.

I know of plenty of clients that need to be launched before running the game. e.g. Origin, uplay, Games for windows live (though this one helpfully launches the client when you start the game, I've never actually done it the other way round).

I've never seen Steam "ignore" any setting. Actually most of my game library currently h

You're being simplistic. Steam is working to decrease the DRM you have to put up with. Without any DRM, companies would skip the PC entirely. Consoles have very, very heavy DRM obviously. If you're satisfied with GOG, that might not bother you, but in order for PC gaming not to be very close to dead, some concessions need to be made, and steam is doing a great job promoting light DRM as an alternative to the consoles.

This is fantastically inaccurate. As it will play all the games already available for steam on linux (452 at current count) it in fact already has more games than the sum total of launch titles for ALL OTHER CONSOLES EVER. Troll harder, why don't you?

And how many 3rd party titles were out before the launch of other consoles?

I don't have time to go into exact figures, but Wii was backward compatible with GameCube games that didn't use the network adapter. Wii U was backward compatible with all Wii games. Game Boy Color could play Game Boy games, Game Boy Advance could play Game Boy and Game Boy Color games, DS could play Game Boy Advance games, and 3DS could play DS games. PlayStation 2 and 3 could play games for the original PlayStation, and early PlayStation 3 consoles could play PlayStation 2 games. Adapters were available

This is some seriously weak troll shit. Steam OS can run a huge swath of emulation too. From MAME to 2600 to Dreamcast and more. Also, In home-streaming is coming, which lets you play the entire catalog of your Win PC games on a SteamOS box.

Steam OS can run a huge swath of emulation too. From MAME to 2600 to Dreamcast and more.

So how do you read the Dreamcast discs, Atari 2600 cartridges, or arcade PCBs on your PC so that you can create ROM images useful in emulators? I know about Retrode, but that's for Super NES and Sega Genesis games, and it seems perpetually sold out.

An individual who runs pirated ROMs on a gaming PC is unlikely to get in trouble. A company that makes and sells gaming PCs and markets them on their ability to run pirated ROMs is far more likely to get in trouble for inducing copyright infringement. MGM v. Grokster.

True, a PC maker could bundle something like Midway Arcade Treasures or Namco Museum with new PCs. But there are a lot of old games whose copyright ownership has become untraceable over the decades. And even for games whose copyright owner is still in business, there are still a lot of copyright owners who either are entirely unwilling to license or insist on unreasonable royalties, as Hairyfeet discovered [slashdot.org] when he tried to do much as you suggest [slashdot.org].

Many of them are shitty, that's true, but that list also contains some diamonds-in-the-rough. Some of the Indie game dev houses are unsung heroes and are actually breaking new ground but you just haven't heard of it because there weren't commercials on TV when it happened. Most of these games are also quite cheap, especially compared to the 50-60$ price fixing lock-in enforced by the Big Three console manufacturers. The Valve games stand the test of time too, and if you count them up on their own also ou

With games like Psychonauts, Bastion, Wasteland, Fez, Frozen Synapse, Brütal Legend, Aquaria, FTL, Super Meat Boy, Stacking, Shank, To The Moon, Hotline Miami, and so many other brilliant games, there are a huge selection of quality launch titles for the Steam Box.

I'd easily take the Steam Box and its library over current console launch titles.

What makes "short" games necessarily inferior, especially at low prices? Even classics like Super Mario Bros. can be completed in six minutes. It's so short that people can run it and re-run it to improve their time for competition [youtube.com].

all available on better platforms.

What makes one platform "better" than another in your opinion? Does a gaming platform need a walled garden with restrictive developer qualifications, put in place ostensibly to improve median game quality on reasoning dating back to the 1983 crash, in order

True. Compare to fiction: not every novel has to be Rand's Atlas Shrugged or Tolstoy's War and Peace or even Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Sometimes there's only time for a novella like Wells's The Time Machine or Malhotra's I Moved Your Cheese. And in the same way that one can pick up a short story anthology for the price of a novel, one can pick up a pile of indie games for the same price as a 50-60 USD AAA game.

Maybe you should branch out. Just because a game doesn't have some shitty pre-movie trailer at the cinema doesn't mean it's not a great game. I highly suggest Bastion and Psychonauts for some actual unique and very intriguing story telling.

Seriously? You've never heard of Tim Schafer? Double Fine Productions, previously LucasArts? Tim is responsible for absolute classic games like Secret of Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango, and of course, Psychonauts, Brütal Legend, and Stacking, from my list.

Super Meat Boy and Fez? They are very high profile indie games. Creators and games were also the subject of an excellent documentary: Indie Game: The Movie.

Wasteland. Created by Interplay Productions, and used as the basis for

None of them warrant a $599 SteamBox purchase to play them. Most of them are laptop (with integrated graphics) material. Now if someone brought out a SteamBox in Ouya price range (at least for starters), it would make sense.

True, you don't need a high powered machine to play these, although I'd recommend something more than integrated graphics for some of them. Valve's own games, which I didn't mentioned, would certainly benefit from more power.

Steam Machines will be created by many different manufacturers. So who knows, maybe one will be priced around the Ouya range. Time will tell.

Gosh. Tough crowd. Do you heckle professionally, or is it just a casual thing?

Of course I cherry picked! That was the basis of my list: show great games that are playable on SteamBox / Linux. Way to miss the point.

Interesting that you singled out Psychonauts, as that often gets criticism for the difficulty of the Meat Circus level, supposedly ruining the game for many. I didn't mind it myself, but I can see their point. The insane asylum levels, and Lungfishopolis, are some of the most blindingly bril

Give it time, not everything can change extremely fast, especially on PC where things have pretty much been the same for almost 20 years now.

Coughsputter- What?! Are you seriously saying that the PC as a gaming platform is roughly the same as in 1994?

Here's a quick example of the sort of change that's happened:
In 1994, most PC gaming was still done in DOS, on computers without a dedicated graphics card. Games drew to a framebuffer. There was only a single processor, and there was only a single application running (ignoring Win3.1's cooperative multitasking, but most games required that Windows be shut off first anyway). The application

With so many corporations focused purely on next quarter profits, not thinking even six months ahead, I suppose it's normal for people to not understand the decade-long plans of Valve.

First off, they're only competing with the PS4/Xb1 by being a couch+TV focused system. They're a fully open system - you can build your own Steam Machine and slap the OS on it. But you'll have a hard time getting a quality machine for less than $500. That's one prong of their long game - erode the Windows tax, and just as importantly, make sure that if Microsoft suddenly fails or turns hostile to PC gaming, they have a way out. But stop thinking of it as "$500 console" (which is basically normal now), and more as a "$500 gaming PC", which is really damn cheap.

I know what you're about to say - "that's just semantics!". Well, yeah, it is, but it's also the truth. You're not getting a console with fixed hardware being sold below cost so they can make up for it in games or even with later hardware revisions, you're getting an upgradeable, user-accessible system.

Second, their "launch lineup" is arguably bigger than the Xb1's and PS4's combined. I just did a search on Steam for games with Linux and full controller support - got 58 results, from Metro: Last Light to Super Hexagon. Sure, they're almost all indie or older games, but you know what? I had more fun with Brutal Legend than I did with the last Call of Duty, so maybe that's a good thing. And that's ignoring the fact that a lot of these boxes also have Windows preinstalled as dual-boot, to get you the hundreds of games *that* supports (even with the "on Steam with full controller support" requirement, there's 292 games that meet the mark, including aforementioned latest CoD).

Third, game support is aimed at long-term growth, not a sudden burst at launch that fails to hold on. Remember how the PS3 was at launch? Decent set of launch games, I suppose, then nearly nothing for a few years. At times I felt like the Gamecube had better third-party support, although looking now the numbers don't back me up. They're not able (or perhaps just not willing) to bribe companies into developing for their hardware, so they basically have to convince them by showing that it's profitable.

Oh, and every SteamOS game intrinsically has Linux support. Remind me again, before Valve got involved how many developers were releasing Linux ports?

They've got the hardware guys rallying behind them because removing the Windows tax removes one of the bigger disadvantages from PC gaming. They've got the indie guys rallying behind them. You are correct in that the major third-parties have not yet committed to the platform, but I'm not sure your implied analysis that AAA games are necessary for a platform is correct. If this takes off, it will make new AAA developers from the indies. I wouldn't bet on that, but I'd also not bet against Valve's long game.

Ouya launched with 104 indie titles, way more than XBone or PS4, and nobody cares because 90% of gamers only care about AAA titles, and 9% of gamers mostly care about AAA titles. Bully for Steam if this does take off, but as it is currently it would be a very poor choice as your principle gaming system, and it doesn't show particularly much promise to develop into something larger than the Ouya. Maybe if they can get a box out for $200, and a selection of popular games, non-nerds would be interested. Unt

The controller is over-engineered and silly, and apparently the SteamBox consoles themselves are going to sell for $500. That's insane. This thing isn't in the same league as an Xbox One or PS4. There are barely any games for it, and barely any announced!

No, it's not the games that are killing steambox, it's the competition.

Steamboxes start at $500 and go on up - the initial list I saw, you can get ones that go to $1400+.

Well shit, you know what? Everyone who wants to buy one (i.e., not you and me, who can

You can even pair them over Bluetooth if you don't mind using a shady, internet connected driver.

That's not the only way to do it (and for the love of god, never install Motioninjoy, unless you like the idea of a Chinese program that can execute arbitrary code fetched from a remote server with elevated privileges), and it's only a problem with Windows (thanks Microsoft!)

It's my understanding that relatively few wired first-party Xbox 360 controllers were produced, mostly for the "core system" package. Nowadays, pretty much all first-party Xbox 360 controllers sold in stores are wireless. If you are switching from an Xbox 360 to a gaming PC, you probably already own mostly or all wireless controllers, and you'll need the receiver to use them with your PC.

Really? Because in 30 seconds I found 5 places selling it. Amazon can have one to my house by Thursday or i can drive to Frys 15 miles away and have it tomorrow.

Most people don't live near the supermarket of electronics. And you can't actually be sure that Fry's will have anything in stock that they claim they have, if you've been there more than once you should know that by now. Sure you can order one, you can order anything.

It's still true that first-party wired controllers are relatively rare on the 360. You rarely see them at all.

The Best Buy, Walmart, and GameStop stores near me had wired controllers when I checked a month and a half ago, but they were all third-party. All first-party controllers I could find were wireless. And even if wired first-party controllers were more widely available, that doesn't help someone who already owns several wireless controllers.

A solid 20 mins at the press event. I'm a big Valve fanboy, but this just didn't work for me. It didn't feel like a good gamepad replacement, nor a good keyboard/mouse replacement. Tries to replace both, masters neither.

If Steam were just a service where I could just buy games, I'd be all over it. Unfortunately, what Steam mostly is is DRM. It's obstructionware that insists on being present. I don't like having to wait for it to load, having to wait for it to retry and fail to find a network connection, and having to check "Offline" every single time I run something. I don't like it blowing my mods away, forcing me to do updates, and randomly unsorting and resetting my list of Skyrim mods if I don't save my edits fast enough. Steam DRM kills the Steambox for me, which is very sad because the Steambox is a Windows 8-killing PC in spite of Valve's efforts to try to steer perception away from that.

having to wait for it to retry and fail to find a network connection, and having to check "Offline" every single time I run something

Why don't you either:

1) Get a stable network connection? or2) Just leave it running in the background after you've started it in offline mode so you don't have to go through the oh-so-arduous process of double-clicking on the icon and starting it again?

And I've never had an issue with it blowing away any of my Skyrim mods, so maybe you're doing something wrong? Try using the Nexus Mod Manager to take care of that.

Skyrim is a poor choice of examples there. What's the mod scene for Skyrim on the consoles? Steam's DRM is only annoying if you consider it in a vaccum, but that's a stupid way to look at it. Skyrim hasn't been released without DRM, correct? Without Steam, it would have been on Origin, which is also DRM. Without either, it would have been not released on the PC at all, and you wouldn't have any mods, from what I can tell.

attaching some additional pieces of hardware like some rubber, plastic pad, spring,small stick to make it behave like real joystick? I remember that there were some hobby projects to make something attached to MSX numpad to make it work like joystick long long ago.